


This poison we call hope

by 70procent



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:27:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/70procent/pseuds/70procent
Summary: We got out.“Half a generator,” I say. “We got half.”Claudette looks at me and nods slowly. “I fixed one in the house too.”The girl and the old man look at us with confused faces. The girl speaks up after opening her mouth soundlessly twice, “We did two together, working on a third when the alarm sounded.”All of us do the math. Three working generators never opened any doors before. Five generators, four survivors. Four generators, three survivors.“What happened? Why did we get free? Did you find something? A key?”, the girl asks with brightly shining hope.Claudette throws a look at me and surprises me when she speaks. “Something like that.”





	This poison we call hope

I am cold even though I huddle close with the others. The fire, constantly burning in the same pattern over and over again, has stopped giving warmth. I silently watch everyone’s mangled faces, full of scars from hooks, from cuts, slashes and from explosions and stabbing.

Everyone around the fire talks with hushed voices, knowing that the trials aren’t far away. They talk of strategies and of patterns. They talk of dangers and safe havens but this, this is our safe haven. This fire that doesn’t burn living human flesh but burns the most insignificant things, bones and coins are consumed, licked and swallowed by repeating flames. Yes, this is our safe haven. This is the place we are watched but not hunted.

I hope I am lucky this time. That I don’t get a dead, faraway look in my eyes and wander off into the forest that surrounds us. The feeling of waking up, standing in a field or outside that maze of hallways and rooms with the crooked sign outside reading ‘Lery’s Memorial Institute’, that dizzying feeling is normal now. But it makes me just as cold knowing nothing of who the hunter is.

I have no recollection how I get to those places but have a sneaking suspicion that it is us that put ourselves there. That we walk in though those gates and as the last one enters the screaming metal closes us in. I fear that we close ourselves in.

Someone ask me something and I look at them. The woman, I always forget her name, the woman with brown skin and brown jacket shakes my arm and ask again. I grunt, not in the mood for talking, and shove her hand away. She looks with concerned eyes at me and I can feel the meaning looks all the others exchange. They are afraid for me.

And then it comes over me. I barely notice that I have stood up along with three others. I just know that I need to get away from this. I need to run away because I am watched from the shadows, although I don’t know who. But before I step over the log I dig into my pockets to find a coin. Hastily I throw it into the fire before I start to run. 

This time I concentrate on where I am running, but I forget myself with the feeling of being chased. And there, there are doors! I see someone running in front of me and I think I know who it is. It looks like the girl from the campfire, one of the new ones. The one with high-waist jeans, but it might be my mind playing tricks. 

I catch myself turning around and facing cornfield after cornfield. The generators’ small flickering lights are mockingly pretending to be stars. Beyond a car I can see the girl, but the mist is almost obscuring her when she crouches. 

I think she might see something I don’t and I hide behind a pair of tires. In the distance I can hear the clunking of a generator. Someone started early. Someone is too quick. The hunter, whoever that is, will know someone is close by. I need to run to the other end. A shack is outlined in the grey mist. I bend myself down a bit as I walk towards it.  
I hear a man scream behind me, far enough that I know I’m temporarily safe. The corn is in the way of my line of sight and I start to run. There’s no point to dawdle when they are over there. 

I am halfway there when I see her again, the girl with the blue shirt and blonde hair. She is untangling the mess of skulls, hair, blood and razor sharp thread. At least she has gotten enough experience that she knows that violent pulling would only make you fingerless. I stand to watch her for a while, trying to remember her name when I notice that there are no candles under the little totem. A waste of precious time. Maybe she hasn’t figured it out yet. I make a move to sneak up and tell her when I hear heavy footsteps and my heartbeat ticks up loudly. I can feel the earth shake in rhythm and I just know that everyone can hear the fast and strong pounding of my heart.

I get to see the pure terror that dawn on the girl’s face before I quickly melt back into the cornfield. My heart still drum and my ears pick up the swing of a weapon. There is a loud moan that could be heard all over this godforsaken place. Between these walls of crumbling brick and rusty gates she has been hit. And I run, quickly. More than once I have run away from a killer. Dodging behind walls and crouched with my back to a locker. Hid in them and hid behind them. 

The lockers are tricky. I have noticed that the doctor man with flaring coat can’t penetrate them with that shock wave of his. The one that digs into your skull and conjures up static pictures of his unblinking eyes and stretched out smile. The lockers must be lined with something… rubber or something like it. However, if someone opens them too look inside while I’m hiding there. I can almost feel the cold, blunt metal hook rip through my shoulder before I’ve even been picked up. 

I reach the shack and immediately hear the girl scream bloody murderer. I look over my shoulder and see her red outline and one yellow in the vicinity of her hook. It is crouched and moves slowly. I nearly chuckles, the newer ones always save too early. The hunter are still looking around and searching for any nearby survivor that is too wet behind their ears. 

My wetness has dried long ago. I barely save them. They come back anyway. Healed with a new scar, or refreshed one, they stumble out of the woods to sit and stare blankly for a while into the fire before they open their mouth. Rarely, words escape them. They sit there chewing on what they want to say until someone feels sorry for them and hold them.   
I’m halfway done with a generator when the brown girl approaches from my left. My eyes fly to her then back to the complicated wires and scraping metal that is a slowly recovering generator. I do not want to cause any explosions, but I nod in her direction anyway.

She looks at me. “Hi”, she breathes soundlessly, barely enough for me to hear over the slamming pistons. “Want some help?”

I don’t answer. She starts anyway. A small seed of fellowship roots within us. Maybe this trial, we will both survive. 

Then everything happens at once. Someone slips, the explosion pushes me away. The heartbeat is deafening and he stands there in the doorway. The mask with a jagged grin and two eyes belonging to the devil himself, burning into my flesh. The red stain that those eyes cast on the ground makes the floor warm up and burn my hands. I run. I flee out the window. The swing passes right by my ear.

I know his tall and massive frame is slow over obstacles. And I glace over my shoulder as he rushes out from the same doorway he appeared. Pinning his devils gaze upon me and walk inhumanly fast towards me. I have gained some energy but it soon depletes and I have to slow down a bit. Still running, but not fast enough to outrun him. 

I weave into the corn and I hear him stomping after me. I make a sudden ninety degree turn and crouches down amongst the thickest batch of cornstalks I can find. A generator starts in the distance. I see him walk up to the point of my turn and become completely still. Like someone turned him off. Then quick as a flash he turns toward me and my heart goes into overdrive. I run again. Find a pallet that I in my panic throw down behind me. He breaks it with his enormous boot and continues this hell hunt. 

Then I hear the sound of pure relief. A trap smashing together and the agonised growl from the bulky man make me throw a glance over my shoulder. He is closer than I though. He’s been trying to cut me off by rounding a stack of tires and barrels and completely stepped into his own trap. The teeth of the trap are imbedded so deeply into the monster’s leg that blood gushes out. And then I see it. Salvation!

His cleaver lies a good few feet in front of him. It is big, rusty and covered with blood. I pick it up. Heavy. The monster snaps his head up and I strike. And strike. And strike. And strike. His head falls to the ground detached from the collapsed body.   
The drumbeat loud in my ears, but sounding different. My heartbeat is different. Nothing moves. I see Claudette. Claudette, the brown woman, staring in shock at what I have done.

We look at each other. The alarm that signifies that the doors are powered ripples through the air. And we run. 

I come about by the fire. My fingers tremble because of the vision of blood and a white mask staring at me from the ground. I feel empty. Like I have done something that I should   
feel bad about but couldn’t. We got out.

“Half a generator,” I say. “We got half.”

Claudette looks at me and nods slowly. “I fixed one in the house too.”

The girl and the old man look at us with confused faces. The girl speaks up after opening her mouth soundlessly twice, “We did two together, working on a third when the alarm sounded.”

All of us do the math. Three working generators never opened any doors before. Five generators, four survivors. Four generators, three survivors.

“What happened? Why did we get free? Did you find something? A key?”, the girl asks with brightly shining hope.

Claudette throws a look at me and surprises me when she speaks. “Something like that.”

The next time I die, hooked as the invisible monster stands lurking in a corner. The old man sees him too and hides behind one of the pounding generators. My scream echoes between houses and I wonder what happened to this place. It looks normal, if a bit run down. This might have been a beautiful village once.

The giant spiderlike legs that spear me in the end are balm to my throbbing shoulder and broken voice. I lift into the skies with embers in my vision. My body burns and I find myself running beside a man I barely seen before. His broad shoulders betraying his earlier sporty lifestyle. We emerge by the fire. Claudette and the old man sitting there already with worn tiredness dripping from them. 

We sit there together. All of us. They talk and all I can see is the way the head rolled from his shoulders that time I… That time. I hear the screams from all of us. I almost instinctively recognise everyone’s voices instead of their faces. Haunted looks and desperation spreading in waves from each and every one and I cannot take it anymore. When four of us again run away I sit by the fire. No one tried to stop each other anymore. Knowing that it makes the trials harder. We call them trials because that is what they feel like in this limbo, this hell. What we did wrong must have been grave for us to end up here. 

Claudette, sweet and rock steady Claudette nudges me. I look up. She is one of the few I respond to nowadays. There’s no reason to get to know the others, they always come back and we do this again. Watch each other get mangled by spikes, hooks and knives. It’s better to not know the ones that are too new to survive. Too new to not get tortured.  
We sit close, shoulders rubbing. She whispers that even the fire seems loud. “We should try again. To… you know…”  
I do know. I don’t want to know. I pretend.

“What?”, I ask.

Her eyes flicker around. “I cannot get it out of my head… Think if what… what happened that time…” Time. We don’t say day or night anymore, because the moon never moves.   
“What if you caused the doors to open?”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I held. Conflicted I look at my hands. These hands have drawn blood. And not once have we met that hunter again. No one has stepped in a bear trap. My heart makes an unnecessary jump. Think if.

“Next time,” I say. “Next time we go into trials. Look for me.”

She nods. 

But I die. Cut open on a knife. And next time I crawl to the hatch in the middle of that hospital. I get hooked. She isn’t there. She gets hooked and I stare into the flames. I get eaten by that woman that looks like she’s been born from mud. We die and survive. Over and over again. Until I throw a cloth with four knots into the unending flames.

We all stand a few steps apart in a dark forest. The trees giants and reaching too far for me to see.

“Let’s split up. Good luck.” the small Asian woman grabs the Italian guy and they head into the mist. I look at Claudette and we nod.

It doesn’t take long for us to find the cottage in the middle. It smells of rotten flesh and burnt hair. There’s an underlying stench of moulding wood. And the humming is heard from afar. We’re being hunted.

I take one of the heavy axes in a locker. Claudette finds a small sharp iron pole amongst the firewood outside. And then we wait.

Nothing happens and only once or twice the humming gets close enough for us to hear.

We move, knowing that being still for too long annoys the birds. I thought they were crows but the Swedish girl, with the ridiculous cap, assured me otherwise.  
We move into the forest. And in the mist we almost lose each other. But Claudette finds me. We huddle again amongst rocks and trees. One generator finishes somewhere semi close, another one explodes further away. The humming is faint but we move towards it.

The giant woman, as wide as the trees and almost as tall, jogs up to the generator and when she kicks it I run up and hack into her back. As she screams in rage and pain I hit. Two, three, four, five times. Then at the back of her head. The veil ripping into shreds and darkens with blood and brain. Even when she lies down over the machine I still go at her, bashing the axe into her flesh. The power of hope is driving me. And the power is intoxicating. So, so sweet in a bitter place like this. And when the gates power on I feel better than I ever have in this hell. 

Claudette stares at me with a smile on her face. “It worked!” She runs up and hugs me. “It worked! Oh, yes, it worked!”

The next crew doesn’t meet the huntress or the trap guy. Neither do the next, or the next and I feel hope spreading in my chest like poison.


End file.
